


After Malachite

by p_dottie



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Flashbacks, Jasper Redemption, Jasper is a multifaceted individual, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but it begins in a not-so-happy place, don't read if detailed descriptions of flashbacks and panic will bother you, endgame is happy I swear, for once Jasper is NOT portrayed as an abuser
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-16 01:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7247296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p_dottie/pseuds/p_dottie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jasper's gem is intact, but her mind is left in fragments. The fight on Watermelon Island is over, and Lapis is taken back with the Crystal Gems, safe and sound. Meanwhile, Jasper has been left at the scene of the earthquake, her present location- and her welfare- unknown. As she struggles with the after-effects of the toxic fusion of Malachite, the Crystal Gems are urged by Steven to exhaust all efforts to find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Phantasmagoria

Splitting apart from Lapis and out of the toxic headspace of Malachite was an experience like no other. Her physical body tearing, mind being severed from the sinkhole of the fusion’s collective consciousness like running a seam ripper over the hem of a garment you no longer like the look of. Jasper could not recall- in all her thousands of years as a wartime officer- a pain of the same caliber as having her consciousness cleaved from another’s so forcefully. The hold Lapis had over her had been absolute, her power seemingly infinite deep below the water’s surface. Escape had been the goal from the beginning, as soon as chains were strung over her body and she had lost herself, but it was a fight lost long before it had even begun.

The fight with Alexandrite was a joyous release, an opportunity to feel air touch her skin again and to feel like her own gem anew- regardless of how trapped she continued to be. It took her last ounce of strength to urge Lapis to work with her, to meld their minds as one in a cohesive unit, and by leaning on her self-control like a crutch Jasper made it long enough to slip. She fought just hard enough, committed a competent action before, for the first time in her life, giving up- right as a spear was strung up into the bow poised to strike them down.

Lapis didn’t have the chance to prehend Jasper’s intentions and stop her before it was too late- she was far too focused on her own pain and animosity to notice Jasper sabotaging them from the start. It took only a moment of carefully timed carelessness and they were released. The spear piercing their chest was welcomed, the arms Jasper managed to control open wide as they were split in two, Malachite poofing out of existence and freeing them to the skies.

Air rushed past her in a vast, continuous gust, like a tornado had picked her up and never let her down. It dawned on her that she was freefalling moments before her mind slipped away, unconscious and unaware of her predicament. Anger and the urge to fight, to make Lapis pay for what she’d done, to get back on track for her mission and capture the Crystal Gems- none of this had a chance to reach her before the exhaustion won out over her and she was out. Jasper wasn’t aware of Alexandrite catching her and Lapis in two enormous, careful palms. She wasn’t aware of the planet shaking beneath her unconscious body, the earth cracking open like the lifeless melons strewn about from their battle.

A moment of blurry vision was allotted to her when she awoke, gem aching and throbbing in the center of her face, giving her just enough awareness to feel her body slipping down a ledge but not enough to stop it. Jasper called upon anything she had left, any reserve she might have had, to move, to get up, to do anything. All she could manage as she fell was a weakly clenched fist, not enough to save herself as she was reunited with the wet abyss beneath the crack in the earth she’d only just narrowly escaped.

The silence struck her harder than the rocky floor of the ocean when she finally settled into a deep trench, the water stilling around her. It was so quiet, she almost couldn’t recognize the voice inside of her head as her own when it wasn’t mingled with the tone of another’s. Jasper found herself in a mix of relief and panic, entirely alone in her mind with her memories- months of suffering impacted her one by one, while the darkness around her seemed to squeeze in on her, pressing her hard into the sea floor.

Water was everywhere, filled every orifice and clogged her ears. She shook her head hard, stirring up sand around her and trying to block out the images racing toward her before they could take form. If breathing was required for her, she would have drowned in seconds from the hyperventilation that overtook her as phantom hands clung to her throat and a murky visage of blue grinned down at her from behind the curtain of sand. Her gem pulsed as if hit, flickering her physical form once before recalling it altogether, leaving her core buried in a fine layer of silt.

* * *

_“Let’s stay on this miserable planet...”_

_“Let’s stay…”_

_“Miserable…together. Together. Together!”_

A screech like a clap of thunder resonated through Jasper’s cognition, rattling her from quiescence within the deep recesses of her gem. Without her physical body she could not see if a boulder had landed beside her, or if the deep sea currents had picked up momentum and knocked her against a hard surface. Although, with the lack of sunlight from the surface, she doubted she could have seen anything either way.

Whatever had rattled her from that thoughtless state, Jasper found herself resenting it. For a time, she thought she had been smashed- she’d never spent more than a handful of minutes within her gem, only long enough to take form again. So when a week passed within her mind she was more than confused. Her gem was intact, and while she’d been debilitated from previous events, there was nothing preventing her from taking form again.

No one was holding her down and stitching her to the ocean floor with cold tendrils of sea water, no one was screaming inside of her mind. But when she put the thought into it and attempted to reform, that screech returned, hitting her as hard as it had before. She reasoned that it was some sort of water-dwelling earth creature’s call, and that the vibrations had merely taken her by surprise and halted her reformation.

By the second, third, fourth time she tried to reform, the coincidence of the screech began to dissolve into great suspicion. Jasper may not have been made for intelligence, but reading one’s surroundings was an invaluable tactic in wartime. She knew the words pummeling her were not from some large fish, but were coming from somewhere within her.

_“I have to keep her…keep her... keep-“_

Despite knowing that she was entirely alone, regardless of the absolute knowledge of her autonomy and the singular presence of her inhabitance, Jasper found herself fighting back against an invisible enemy from within her mind. She pushed and screamed, her thoughts clawing their way out but never breaching the barrier her lack of form afforded her. 

That voice seemed to swallow her up, and though she had no arms to be chained, Jasper could still feel them being bound tightly at her back, could feel her knees bending and being forced onto the ground. It couldn’t be, she reasoned, it was impossible. Her body wasn’t even real in this moment, she was dormant.  
Her resolve snapped, and she was transported in her mind back in time and back into that fusion- by some force much stronger than she had ever encountered. With her form real again, she could move, could wriggle her way to the surface and break through with a yell, and she could finally breathe. Her eyes opened and in front of her…

_“You. You!”_

Jasper clawed at the shelf of water beneath her, grappling for purchase to reach out and…and do what, she hadn’t thought out, but she could do something! Her chest ached as she panted with the force of such a realization. She could finally do something, after months of being shoved down and beaten into her mind, she had an opportunity.

Large hands gripped her ankles and drug her back, flopped onto her stomach while she cried out for relief to some creature she could hardly recognize,claws digging into nothing until she no longer had hands for gripping.

Jasper awoke in her gem, mind quiet but buzzing with the memory she had relived. The temptation to give reforming another try was nipping at the corners of her mind, her desire to feel the world around her and to see and hear, even if she was still beneath hundreds of meters of ocean and dirt, was calling to her. But a sour twist in her core overtook her at the thought of once again being thrown to her injured mind’s mercy. So in her gem Jasper remained, stagnant, aphonic, appreciating the emptiness of her own cognizance in a way she never had before.


	2. Scrutiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven sits down with the gems to ask a few questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah gosh I'm late with this update, my apologies. I'll try my best to keep to a weekly schedule, since things are about to start heating up!

So much preparation and planning, readying themselves for what they thought to be the potential end of everything, and to fight for what they held dearest to their hearts- only to find that the Cluster wasn’t even really an enemy. It shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, given the track record of supposed foes flipping sides, like Peridot, or remaining morally ambiguous like Lapis or even Centipeedle. At least, that’s the wording Connie used when Steven finally- hesitantly, requiring much nudging on his friend’s part- got around to catching her up on the latest Crystal Gem business.

“You contained a massive amalgamation of the collective consciousness belonging to millions- no, likely BILLIONS of gems- in a BUBBLE! I…I can’t believe it. Really it shouldn’t take to long for these things to sink in anymore, but you come up with a new freaky power every day Steven!”

Steven was torn between being flattered- and a bit bashful at the comments- and feeling somewhat guilty for leaving his best friend in the dark for so long. It had been months since Steven had brought Connie into the magical portions of his life, and he was still acclimating to the gusto with which she embraced and soaked up every ounce of it. Even besides her eagerness to learn how to fight with him and desire to help him protect the earth, her enthusiasm could be seen in the way she discussed gem business and became so enthralled in the conversations about magic and life-or-death scenarios.

The way she gasped and hung onto every word, clinging to the edge of her seat while any of the gems spoke was endearing, bordering on flattery. Connie’s hands flew when she spoke, gesturing wildly while she continued to comment on the sheer size and power of the Cluster, and her eyes widened and she spewed an unending stream of incredulous compliments when she couldn’t even find a hand gesture to express how amazed and proud she was of Steven finding a more pacifistic approach to what could have been a war of worlds.

Meanwhile, Steven couldn’t shake the feeling deep in his gut that something was missing. Everything seemed to fall too neatly into place when the Cluster situation was over; he couldn’t recall ever completing a mission without having to clean up some wreckage afterwards. Even fighting Frybo left behind a street full of debris. All that he could think of in the days following their drill expedition was the lingering threat of Homeworld sending more gems back to earth, once the Ruby squad found out that Jasper wasn’t on planet Neptune. And the still bubbling animosity between the eager-to-please Peridot and sullen Lapis- who were just barely learning to get along with each other without hurting any feelings or stepping on toes- made for a tense situation for the middleman Steven had made himself.

“…wish I could have seen it, a bad fusion, I can’t even imagine! I bet it was enormous and- Steven? Hey, Steven!”

Attention drawn from his own little world, Steven’s head whipped back around from his gazing at the far wall to direct his attention to Connie. He hadn’t even realized she was still talking when he lost himself in thought, and he felt bad for ignoring her.

“Huh? Oh, sorry. Guess I…stared off into space a little. What were you saying?”

Connie pursed her lips and hummer, knowing her friend’s mannerisms well enough by now to know that the vacancy in his eyes and tension on his shoulders meant something was up, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with keeping anything else from her. Especially when it meant it was affecting him enough to make him grip the edge of the couch tight enough to turn his tanned knuckles completely white.

“Steven, is something wrong?” She scooted closer to him, tilting her head to the side in an attempt to make eye contact when he hung his head to avoid it.

“It all feels too…calm. Like when a storm hits the city late at night, and the power goes out for a while and everyone is really scared, but then it leaves after a few hours. You don’t need candles anymore, and the phone service is back, but the air is so still it’s creepy. Then fish start washing up and people work for weeks to clean up the boardwalk and sometimes even rebuild their houses. Except, there’s no destroyed houses, and no dead fish! Not even seaweed far up on the sand. Aside from those Rubies maybe coming back soon, everything is just fine, and that doesn’t feel normal.”

Steven wrung his hands together and hugged himself when he spoke, eyes wide and revealing his uncertainty. How long would it be before the wreckage showed itself? What was left behind on the metaphorical boardwalk after the Cluster, what were they missing? The drill hole was even filled in…

“Well,” Connie thought for a brief moment, before a lightbulb popped over her head. “Jasper! You have Lapis, she’s at the barn with Peridot. And those Rubies are gone, for now. But you guys don’t know where Jasper is, do you? Wasn’t she a really big threat?”

“No! Connie, you’re right! We haven’t even talked about her yet. Which is…strange.” He gazed off at the door to the house, watching the calm waves of the ocean lap at the sand with his mouth pressed into a thin line betraying a stress level far beyond his age.

“Strange how? Don’t the gems usually take care of some stuff without you? Maybe they think she’s too dangerous, considering she did imprison you all on a ship and tried to abduct you. But then again, you did drill down to the core of the planet almost unsupervised…and astral projected into a sentient watermelon.”

“Watermelons aside.” Steven shook his head, and turned to face Connie, worry etch into his features. “I think…they might be keeping something from me. They didn’t even tell me what happened after I left the island, and when I asked about it they just said that Lapis is okay and we don’t have to worry about Malachite anymore. Pearl looked really weird when I asked, and Garnet was…more stoic than usual.”

“Maybe you should ask them about it? Be candid about your worries, they have to tell you something! Even if it is that they just don’t know anything.”

With a resolute nod, Steven decided upon a foolproof tactic for drawing out information from his fellow gems- asking politely while sitting in a circle on the living room floor.

Connie had gone home to give him some privacy with his thoughts to scheme, and to build up some nerve. It wasn’t every day that he basically accused his family of lying to him.

The gems came in on the warp pad late in the evening, Amethyst and Garnet coated in some sort of pink ooze, and Pearl looking mortified at the scene as Amethyst began inching closer to her with her dirty hands outstretched. That mortification visibly increased when she turned her attention away from Amethyst long enough to notice Steven sitting on the floor, wide awake.

“Steven! It is hours past your bedtime. What are you doing up so late?”

“I wanted to talk to you guys. Sooo I waited until you got back from your mission.” His speech was interrupted by a yawn, which he barely concealed. “Didn’t think it would take so long.”

Pearl didn’t seem very pleased with this, but her comments were halted by a raised hand from Garnet, hushing her long enough to raise a question.

“What did you want to talk about?” Garnet’s voice was even as always, and her face revealed no underlying worry, but the way her shoulders stiffened when Steven began to speak belayed her every thought.

“Jasper. We don’t know where she is, do we? Why aren’t we talking about her? If there’s something going on, I want to know! I’m a Crystal Gem too.” Steven wasted no time in beating around the bush. There was a bright orange elephant in the room that needed to be discussed.

At the mention of the lost gem, Pearl’s face dropped. She turned to Garnet, opening and closing her mouth a couple of times before ultimately choosing to remain silent. Garnet’s mouth pressed tight, and her hand that had stalled Pearl previously reached forward to gesture to the floor where Steven was sitting. She sighed through her nose just barely audibly before speaking.

“Then let’s talk.”

* * *

“She just kinda fell through a giant crack in the earth, no big deal! She’s a gem, gems are tough stuff. We come out of a crack in the earth, and she’s going back into one. It’s justice!”

“Amethyst! Don’t be so macabre…It’s not like she’s met her final resting place!”

Steven’s horrified expression belied just how big of a deal that actually was, despite Pearl’s assurances that there was nothing wrong. He placed a hand over his stomach and gripped tightly over the area surrounding his gem, struck silent while the events he missed were filled in for him.

They tried to explain the scene following his departure from the Watermelon Steven as best they could; Garnet ensured him that an effort was made to catch both Lapis and Jasper, but there was something in the way that Pearl averted her eyes and kept her mouth covered that told Steven otherwise.

“The earth split open when the Cluster began to take its form. There was nothing we could have done, outside of what we did. I don’t see her being a threat to us now, so there is no reason to speculate on her whereabouts.”

Garnet seemed so assured in this, but her mouth remained tightly drawn up and her forehead wrinkled and stiff, like she was sealing up her face to keep any more words from seeping through.

A few moments of slightly uncomfortable silence passed before Steven spoke up, taking his time to mull over the information he was given and gather a good response. He could tell from the other gems’ postures that he wouldn’t have too much time left to speak on the matter. Pearl was nervously wringing her teal sash tightly in her hands, Amethyst voiced nonchalance but sat with her arms crossed and averted her attention from the conversation. And then there was Garnet, face tight and unreadable while she tapped her fingers rhythmically on her crossed knees.

“If she’s not a threat…does that mean she’s hurt? You thought Peridot was a threat until we bubbled her.”

Garnet’s jaw clenched, her teeth pressing together hard, and the tapping of her fingers abruptly stopped.

“It means she’s not a threat.” She stood and turned toward the warp pad, fists clenched by her sides. “So we won’t worry about her anymore.”

Steven stood and rushed to grab Garnet’s hand, stopping her before she stepped on the pad. His eyes were wide and wet when he looked up to her.

“Garnet, I know you don’t like her because of what she said about fusion. And I know she’s a bad Homeworld gem, but so was Peridot! And so was Lapis! But they’re here now, because we gave them a chance. We can’t just leave her out there and let something bad happen to her, even if we don’t like her.”

He paused for a minute, waiting for anyone to speak up, or maybe trying to find something else to say to change their minds. Pearl and Amethyst wouldn’t meet his eyes when he turned to them for backup, and Garnet remained facing the door to the temple.

“Didn’t my mom say that all life was worth protecting?”

Garnet jumped like a boulder had landed beside her, shoulders arching up to her ears. She sighed and turned around after a long moment, laying a hand on Steven’s shoulder.

“You’re right. Rose would have wanted us to try. So we’ll try. But not tonight, you need to get to bed. We can talk about searching for Jasper tomorrow morning.”

Steven beamed, hugging Garnet around the waist before she retired to her room. He turned to Pearl and Amethyst, whose jaws were hanging open in shock before snapping shut.

“Wow Steven, I’ve never seen Garnet change her mind like that!”

Pearl ran a curved finger under her eye and sniffed. “You’re so much like your mother. She would be very proud of you, Steven.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like and comment if you enjoyed it! More to come soon, I hope to update at least once a week.  
> Send any questions or critique to my tumblr at p-dottie.tumblr.com. Thank you!


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